The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only
Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with the biggest budget in the
history of Hollywood, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into one of
the highest-grossing films of all time. Featuring text drawn directly from the
Bible, a cast of thousands, and a cinematic bag of tricks that could belong to
none other than Hollywood’s greatest showman, The King of Kings is at once
spectacular and deeply reverent—part Gospel, part Technicolor epic. Arguably one
of the best-loved films ever made in a 112-minute general release version and
the rarely seen 155-minute cut that premiered at the grand opening of Grauman’s
Chinese Theatre.

NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The
Horizontal is the time in minutes.

Bitrate:

1927

Audio

Silent (Dolby Digital 1.0 mono)

Subtitles

Intertitles are in original English

Features

Release Information:Studio: Criterion Collection

Aspect Ratio:Original aspect Ratio 1.33:1

Edition Details:

• New,
restored digital transfers of both versions of The King of Kings:
DeMille’s 155-minute roadshow version and his subsequent 112-minute
general release
• New Dolby Digital 5.1 scores by composers Donald Sosin (1927
version) and Timothy J. Tikker (1931 version), plus the original score for
the 1931 release by Hugo Riesenfeld
• Behind-the-scenes footage from the making of The King of
Kings
• Cast portraits by photographer W.M. Mortensen
• Production and costume sketches by renowned artist Dan Sayre
Groesbeck
• Stills gallery of rare production and publicity photos
• Original illustrated program and press book featuring
photographs from the film’s gala premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and
studio correspondence from DeMille
• Original theatrical trailers
• Plus: a booklet featuring a 1927 essay by DeMille, an excerpt
from Robert S. Birchard’s new book Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood,
production notes, and a new essay by film critic Peter Matthews

The 1927
version is presented here in an excellent transfer despite some fairly
significant damage to the original elements. Black and White scenes show some
amazing fine detail. On occasion whites look a little blown out, but for the
most part contrast is as perfect as a film of this age is going to look. Colour
scenes are heavily damaged and exhibit some major flicker. These portions within
the 1927 version still have much better colour/contrast than the 1928 version.
The score sounds very good with a wide range of fidelity (it should as it is a
brand new recording). It is presented as a Dolby Digital 2.0 track, not a DD 5.1
mix as stated on the Criterion website. Extras on disc one are very informative,
but are mostly text and image based, except for the trailers.

The 1928 version is of much lower quality and represents a different film
experience altogether.

Some scenes in the 1927 that are colour are presented in B&W in the 1928. Quite
a few scenes do not share the same frames, making matching screen capture nearly
impossible. The B&W scenes in the later version sometimes look sharper and more
detailed than their 1927 colour counterpart. The original 1928 Riesenfeld score
sounds thin and has some hiss while being fairly limited in range. It is
presented in Dolby Digital 1.0 and compliments the film nicely. The alternate
2004 pipe organ score (DD 2.0 not 5.1) sounds very clean but I still preferred
the original mono score for this version of the film.

Extras on disc two include 13:30 min of behind the scenes silent footage, stills
and more image/text based extras including costume sketches and portrait stills.

Overall this set is very highly recommended and to have the longer 1927 version
of the film in such a high quality transfer represents a real revelation for
fans of this or any silent film.out
of